Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

What on earth do you use Logs for Tabby, I've never used them since school...

E.T.A. just read previous post and still no wiser...

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

Arithmetic is something to be learned largely by rote but once beyond that it becomes a language. I can't explain how or why but when reading or writing in that language some of us can visualise what is being conveyed. Literally visualise.

That being said in a learning situation very often it matters very much the way that a solution to a question is obtained much more so than just the correctness of the answer when the exercise is forming the path to the understanding of the subject being taught.

Modern teaching methods? I very much doubt if I could cope. Far too boring, especially in the case of the sciences.

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

I still have a slide rule in my desk drawer.

And I think that I could find a set of log tables, if I tried.

However, my Samsung Mobile has super-ceded everything else, at my great age!

Like many, I find that the easiest way is the way to go!

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

Many years ago I was asked to see my daughter's primary school teacher because I had been helping my daughter do long division.

She had been getting every homework answer wrong and frankly I didn't understand the method she had been taught (but neither did she) so I showed her the way I had been taught in the 50s and eventually she was getting it right.

Two days later I was summoned to school to see the teacher, She couldn't understand my method and asked me to show her which I did. She said that was "not how it was done these days" (1990s) and modern methods were much easier (??)

Cut a long story short - my daughter got extra tuition in the "modern" method and started to get it right but I still didn't understand how it was done.

They have probably changed methods twice more since then.

I still have my slide rule from Grammar School but personally I preferred log tables however all my kids had to have calculators that did graphs and all sorts of wonderful things.

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

there is a lot to be said in the way we were taught back in the 1950/60 era.
I loved maths buit did get a bit lost in the purpose of trigs(sin -cosin-tangent) just cpuld not understand when you would use it.
money was more complicated than now with pounds shillings and pence but we didn't seem to let that worry us too much.

Seems like kids today have everything laid out for them and far to easy, no need for a brain any more.

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

Despite the fact I was in the top group for Maths it was always a mystery to me I always came last.

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

I found Maths .... Algebra, Geometry and whatever, the easiest subject at school because there was very little to remember.

pi r squared, we had a book of Log Tables ... simple.

Not like all those historical dates and stuff, you had to write it on your shirt sleeve to pass an exam.

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

In response to queries about logarithms:

1/. They were useful for finding approximations for "big sums". Calculators now supercede this.

2/. It's not until A level that you actually look at the definition of what a log is, start manipulating it, look at other practical purposes (perhaps one which you can relate to given the current situation is about exponential growth rates....by using logs it is easy to test how well the model works and make predictions) and solve a whole raft of equations which are thrown up in many walks of life which involve maths.

You might be interested in reading about the rather odd fella who invented them John Napier.

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

Alas, not true. You have become adept at those things that you reminisce happily about and tend to use (or have used) regularly. You will have forgotten all of the rest since you've not needed it as (the result of their applications) have all been "laid out" for you.

IMHO, in terms of curriculum (involving the full breadth of all subjects), children today are required to learn as many things as children always have been, including yourself.

Re: Modern Teaching Methods.

You may wish to purchase a fascinating book called The History of Pi. Or, perhaps not

I've got a copy somewhere, along with Euclid's Elements.

Fascinating reads ..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz